He lifts his head and stares at me. “I need to be inside of you.”

“I’m yours. Take me.”

Forgoing any foreplay, his hands push my legs further apart. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip before crushing his mouth to mine. I close my eyes as fire explodes through my body. Then he grabs both of my hands and raises them back over my head, holding my hands in place with one of his. I watch him as he takes himself in his hand, readying himself for me, and I gasp at the pure eroticism of it all. He plunges into me and I scream out as he takes what’s his. The pace he sets is hard and fast. Watching him and feeling the weight of his body on mine makes me tremble. I can’t touch him and somehow that only makes my need for him more intense. I know what he’s doing—he’s marking me, but I don’t care. He already owns every piece of me. If he needs this to remind him, I’ll give it to him.

When he grinds himself deep inside me, my head falls back and my legs tighten around him without any conscious thought. He urges me to follow his pace as he moves hard and fast and I follow. He seems to get lost in the moment, like he can’t get enough of me. I close my eyes and just absorb every ounce of him.

We touch each other everywhere. Our hands, our lips, our bodies, they never leave each other. Running, pressing, skimming, and gliding over every ounce of flesh, we continue to move at a pace we never have before. I open my eyes in time to see his close. My moans turn into his groans and before I know it I am screaming, “Oh God, yes!” over and over again. Pausing before taking one final thrust, he does the same.

Shuddering, he pulls out of me and lifts my arms over my head again with one hand while the other moves down my body. I’m taken aback as to what he’s doing but when his hot breath hits my neck and his hand cups my sex, I know. I moan. I can’t help it. I’m already so wet from the combination of him and me, that when he inserts two fingers inside me they easily slide in. His thumb presses against me as his fingers move in and out, over and over. I can feel him harden against my thigh and the need to have him inside me is stronger than ever. He moves his mouth to my breast and circles the nipple with his tongue before sucking on it, and, although I just came, I can feel it building again. The warm hardness resting on my thigh, his hand on my sex, his mouth on my nipple—it’s sensory overload and I scream out as pleasure tears through me.

I’m still panting a minute later when, without a word, he picks me up and carries me the rest of the way up the stairs and into the house. After kicking the door shut, he sets me on the bed and lies next to me, urging me to move on top of him. Of course I do. I tuck my arms under his neck and lay my head on his chest. Once my breathing calms, I kiss his neck and then nuzzle into it. He kisses my head and rests his cheek there. We both know we have to talk, but neither of us wants to and that’s okay for now.

After a few minutes, I peek up at him and his eyes are fixed on me. I raise one eyebrow and smirk at him.

He grins back. “What?”

I try to make light of a situation that I know is nothing but heavy. “You skipped all the romance, Loverboy.”

Laughing, he says, “You know it can’t always be rainbows and butterflies.”

I grin at him, remembering the first weekend we spent together and how I asked him if he was dreaming of rainbows and butterflies. Then inching myself up next to him on the pillow so that we are nose to nose, I say, “I think you got the butterflies part down pretty well.”

We lay together for a long while, but neither one of us falls asleep. Leaning over him, I push the hair from his eyes and kiss his nose. “I missed you today.”

“I missed you, too.”

“Don’t ever not call me again.”

“Dahlia, you’re the one who wouldn’t talk to me at Grace’s and then took off. Calling you wouldn’t change what happened, and, honestly, I was pissed at you and didn’t want to talk to you.”

Tears well in my eyes, and he pulls me back down to him. “Besides, how could I call you when you smashed your phone?”

I look at him, dumbfounded. “How do you know that?”

“I called Aerie this morning and she told me she was on her way to see you. Later on she texted me that you got mad and threw your phone. Care to tell me why?”

“I think you already know why, smart-ass.”

“Yeah, but I want to hear you say it.”

I give him a shut-up-now-before-you-get-in-any-more-trouble look and say, “Please promise to always call, no matter how mad we are.”

“First you have to promise you won’t hang up on me.”

“I promise to never hang up.”

Making a crossing motion over his heart he says, “I promise to call.”

“River, I’m sorry we never made it to Las Vegas.” We haven’t discussed our postponed elopement and I want him to know getting married to him is something I still plan to do.

He stares at me for a long time, maybe searching for answers to his own questions, questions he should already know the answers to. “There’s a lot going on right now. We’ll make it there when the time’s right.”

With that, I know we have done enough talking for one night. So when he wraps his arms around me, rolling us over, I close my eyes and get lost in him again.

This time we don’t take it slow, either, but River pours his heart into every touch and I show my love for him with every single kiss. I don’t know what time it is when we finish, but I lie back on top of him, ready to drift off to sleep. Tonight I don’t need to pick a side of the bed. I will stay where I am, where I want to be.

Chapter 10

Rebel Beat

“River, get your ass out of bed! We have to meet with Ellie in thirty minutes.” Those are the first words I hear, right as our bedroom door swings open. I grab for the blanket and pull it up as far as I can.

Rolling to his side, he pulls me behind him, shielding me. “What the f**k, Xander, did you forget how to knock?”

Xander stands there looking very hungover. Leaning against the doorframe he says, “Shit. I thought you were alone. Didn’t know the Muse came home. Well, we have a meeting, so get your ass up.”

“I’m not going to any more meetings. Go without me.”

“This one is with the label.”

“Xander, I’m not going.”

Xander shakes his head and mumbles something under his breath that sounds like “asshole” but then he says, “Whatever, Loverboy! I’ll call you later with the details.”

As River pulls me tighter to him, I nestle my head contentedly on his shoulder.

“I’m sure you will,” he says to Xander.

“I’m outta here. Glad to see you worked it out.”

I wave goodbye to him and River says, “Xander, thanks for last night.”

Xander rubs his hand against the back of his head. “Whatever, no problem, but maybe next time we could stick to vodka.”

River and I both get a laugh out of that. Xander really does look like a mess. Funny I thought he could hold his liquor.

“Yeah man, but I’m not planning on there being a next time,” River says and I tighten my hold on him and kiss his shoulder.

Xander smirks as he leaves. Closing the door behind him he yells back, “By the way—nice shiner.”

Leaning around to kiss River, my fingers dance up his bare back. “You should go to those meetings, you know. It’s not good for the lead singer of the band to look disinterested.”

Turning his head to meet my kiss, he rolls over. Hovering over me, his lips almost touching mine, he answers me. “I’m not interested so I guess the way it looks is the way it is.”

I shove him a little.

“What? It’s the truth.”

“Well since the tour is really happening I think . . .”

He doesn’t let me finish before he rolls us over so that I’m once again lying on top of him. “There. Let’s start the morning over.”

I laugh and let him do what he’s so very good at—changing the subject.

One hand moves the hair off my face as he asks, “What do you want to do today, beautiful girl?”

“I think we should probably work. Don’t you?”

He shakes his head. “I just want a few hours alone with you.”

Circling my fingers around his now very black eye, I grin slyly and say, “That can be arranged.”

“So any ideas?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, everything.”

“Well that narrows it down,” he says as he continues to stroke my hair.

“Does it hurt?” I’m staring at his eye.

He raises his arm over his head and shakes it before saying, “Nope, just a little sore, I’ll be able to lift the Starbucks coffee you’re going to get with no problem.”

I burst into a fit of giggles before I can respond. “First of all I meant your eye, but I’m glad your hand is better, and, second of all, I did not lose, you did! You couldn’t have stayed underwater if I would have held you there.”

“Yeah, I might have been a little buoyant.”

I can only laugh. He was more than a little buoyant, but talking about why he drank so much is not what I want to do right now. “How about we stop for coffee on the way to do something I have always wanted to do?”

He slides his body along the length of mine, then slips his arms under my back and presses his lips to my ear. “Hmmm . . . that sounds fun.”

I sigh deeply. With his body so close and his warm breath on me it’s hard to concentrate. I think a day away from all the chaos will help us both find the courage to have the conversation neither one of us wants to initiate. With determination I place my hands on his chest and push him off me slightly.

“What?” he asks, glancing down at me.

“Not sex!”

He pauses then kisses me. “I know,” he laughs, “but I can’t help it if my mind wanders when you throw words around like ‘something I’ve never done.’”

Careful not to grab his sore hand, I scoot out from under him and pull him by his other hand. “Come on, Loverboy, we’re headed to Keanu Reeves territory.”

He looks at me questioningly and shakes his head no.

“Point Break. Keanu Reeves. Johnny Utah. Latigo Beach,” I say so he knows where I’m talking about.

All signs of playfulness and laughter disappear. “I know the movie, Dahlia. But I’m not going to the beach with you.”

I gently clutch both of his hands and mold my n*ked body to his. Staring right into his emerald green eyes, I beg, “Please. Let’s go to Malibu. I’ve never been and I think it will be a good place for us to spend the day together.”

Resting his forehead against mine, he slowly shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“You have to go to the beach with me eventually. Let’s just get in the car and hop on the 101. Once we get there, if you’re still not feeling it, we can just hit up Neptune’s Net for breakfast.”

He looks straight at me when he says, “God, why can’t I ever just say no to you?”

***

Once I’m showered and dressed in my bathing suit, shorts, and my concert T-shirt of The Who, I pull my hair back and head downstairs. I’m in my office typing out a few e-mails when he enters. He had to take a call from Xander so I decided to get a little work done.

He comes in wearing jeans, a white short-sleeve T-shirt, and his Wayfarer sunglasses. It looks more than hot on him but it’s not exactly beach apparel, so I have to laugh. Especially when I look down and see his Adidas—at least he traded his work boots for sneakers.

“You can’t wear jeans to the beach.”

There’s a flash of the smirk I love before he slides the waistband of his jeans down so I can see his board shorts. Come to think of it I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in shorts and I know he would never own a pair of flip-flops. I have to draw in a deep breath to compose myself because he looks amazing no matter what he wears and showing me his bare skin does amazing things to me. But if I act on them we’ll never make it to the beach.